Spike Diaries
by TKodami
Summary: Spike keeps a diary! Musing, reflections, bits of history, and oh yes, bloodyAWFULpoetry.
1. 1880, Clarissa

**Title:** Spike Diaries  
**Author:** TKodami  
**Fandom:** Buffy the Vampire Slayer  
**Rating: **PG  
**Disclaimer:** Neither the series, nor the characters belong to me. I'm only mucking about in the Whedon sandbox.  
**Summary:** Spike keeps a diary! He reflects on moments before and after those key moments in his (un)life. We also see a little more about William's life before he was turned. There will be bad poetry contained within. You have been warned.  
**Notes:** Spoilers up to S5, "Fool for Love."

#

**20 January 1880**

Ho hum, diary. It looks like this year is shaping up to be as dreary as a London winter that lingers in the cracks and joints of our parlor, chilling the air even long into summer. I haven't found occasion to write since I ducked out of the DOWNINGS' New Years celebration to nurse some choice verses of Southey under the green grocer's awning. You couldn't possibly believe the frivolous nonsense that the so-called ladies and gentilhommes discuss. Sensational patter is the only thing that seems to hold their scrabbling minds for more than a minute before it races on to the next slip gossip. It can be so likened unto watching mice scratch for cheese in the poorer shopkeeps that I can't keep from laughing under my breath whilest they prattle.

All the while, I keep a vain vigil for Clarissa--the student of Natural Philosophy and Ancient Literatures from Sheffield with whom you are no doubt acquainted. The radiant flaxen-haired fille! In her visage, one plainly sees old Breton blood. Noble blood. Her of the slender hand that drew supple curves suitable for the most sinuous French. Clarissa: my pupil. Clarissa: my muse. Can I count the words that I've spilled for her on the pages of my old notebook? My mind hungers to give an exact number, but having the other day flung the notebook from the London Bridge in such a fit of passion and sublimity that would have given even Percy Shelly a pang of remorse. After some thought, I fished the sodden workbook from such an ignoble, viscous grave. Good thing the Thames offers a good enough foothold--sludge in summer, cold icy sludge in winter--to walk halfway twixt the banks. --Still, it is a bit tricky to pick out words, all runny and blurry on the page. Which, knowing my fits of writerly incompetence when in a passion, I'm sure 'twas an improvement on the general tenor of the prose.

_Clarissa_--such a gem! And bright too, here excelling at Virgil, Horace, and Livy before we barely finished with Aristotle's Ars Poetica. But her six months have passed and she has departed for Naples for finishing school. It has been three months since she last rang herself in to my study. And these vigils at the Downings' New Years party or the DULLESDALES salons are vestiges of Clarissa and nothing more. That I think I'll glimpse her young, fresh face amongst the crush of stuffy English aristocracy is--a sweet delusion, but a delusion nonetheless.

It has been my curse to only love smart girls. Without such high mental contemplation, society is simply _tedious_. I think I shall never love but a whip-sharp girl who can as easily quote SHAKESPEARE as she can recite Latin treatises. I tell myself I will not have children except to raise fat, winsome poet-scholars.

I don't know why I bother attending these functions at all, except for Mother's sake. She worries, you know. She says I've grown pale and introverted since Clarissa and I've refused to take on new pupils. To which, I quote her the Immortal Words of SOUTHEY:

Oh he is worn with toil! the big drops run Down his dark cheek; hold--hold thy merciless hand, Pale tyrant! for beneath thy hard command O'erwearied Nature sinks. The scorching Sun, As pityless as proud Prosperity, Darts on him his full beams; gasping he lies Arraigning with his looks the patient skies, While that inhuman trader lifts on high The mangling scourge. Oh ye who at your ease Sip the blood-sweeten'd beverage! thoughts like these Haply ye scorn: I thank thee Gracious God! That I do feel upon my cheek the glow Of indignation, when beneath the rod A sable brother writhes in silent woe. --"Sonnet III" SOUTHEY 1797

But I think she hears them not as well as she hears my own. BLOOD, INHUMANITY and SCORN aren't fit subjects for such public contemplation. And, wouldn't you mark it, I've since promised to attend the UNDERWOODS' Winter Ball in three day's time. The elder Underwoods are illiterate, humourless people--and their smell of damp moulding and straw does nothing for their nearby surroundings--but I hear their daughter is returned from a lengthy stay in Istanbul. There's not a personage so completely dull that the mystery and allure of Constantinople couldn't have rubbed something off--though if such a creature were to exist, I'm sure they would take on the guise of such the Underwoods. Their spawned creature, if altogether lacking, should at least have trinkets and books from the Crusaders' city. The evening cannot be a complete loss, then. And should worse come to worse, at least the Underwood parlor has recessed windows which make for fine reading if the affair turns dreadful.

And now I feel I am suffiently moved to compose my own verse. It is a New Year, and all of my old verse, whenst compared to the venerable Southey, is lower than trash. This poem marks afresh my poetic effort. It shall be numbered "one" in my grand poetic endeavor. Poem dedicated to Clarissa of the Flaxen Hair, Southey the Best British Poet in the History of the Empire, and my Dear Old Mum On the Occasion of Writing in My Journal and Meditating Upon Constantinople.

Birds and Angels Singing of Beauty on a Dreary London Afternoon,  
As Observed from the Window of a Drafty London Flat  
Hereafter Known Simply As Poem 1

Golden veins of lightening light!  
Shining down of heaven's o'erweening Flight  
of Angels; the clouds of the New  
Year Part, and down through the True  
Annals of the Heavenly Host,  
the name "Clarissa" is boast--!  
Hark! Thy mark! Upon The High Highted Lark! Upon scented ramparts!  
The scratching of feet through the Halls  
The whirling of bustles and corsets Balls  
Heaven writes the name of LOVE  
As though with FIRE on my heart:  
Clarissa, CLARISSA, Cla-RISSA, CLA-rissa, Clarissa! Clarissa!  
O Hark, my heart overflowth with woe.  
CLARISSA!

Oh stunning of stunning developments! It's raining again. I think I'll crawl into the _Iliad_ while I wait for the Doctor to arrive. Mother's cough has worsened and it paralyzes me that I can do nothing but spin her verses and tales of a man that I am not.


	2. 1998, Sunnydale

**24 November 1998**

'S a hollow comfort that I find you here, diary. Thought I lost you when the warehouse went up last year. Found you tucked away in Dru's trunk, under Miss Edith, hair burnt to nubs, finger singed, cloths blackened with soot. Miss Edith burnt, but you're pretty well intact, diary. A full-on century of my life, safe as it were. A century of shaggin' and killin' remembered in these pages. All lost, I thought, in that wheelchair and unable to scramble Dru's chest from the fire. But now I've got you back and wassit cost? Just the lady herself, is all.

Bloody Dru. I do the right thing by her, rescue her from that insufferable ponce Angel, manage to half-save the world while I'm at it. Because I know my Dru; she wouldn't get on well in those Hell-on-Earth type scenarios. What with the blotting out of the firmament and the general ruin and damnation rained on all those pretty little girls, making them hard- not soft and sweet as she likes 'em. _So yeah_, I make the unpardonable mistake of saving this damned ball of dirt and she what? Takes up with a Sepavro Demon in Tijuana. A Lister in Rio. A Chaos Demon in Santiago. I mean, for pity's sake, I'm more demon than a bleedin' _Lister_ who makes nicey nice with the food. Hell, it hadn't eaten humans since the Crusades. She keeps punishing me, and I'm not going to bloody well stand for it. 'O course, _Ican'tseemtostandatthemoment_. But. Beside the point.

This warehouse is where it all started to go wrong, you know. Before it got all charred by that Watcher git that Angelus pushed over the edge. His honey's corpse tarted up in his bed. Bloody ponce never knew when to quit, did'e? But it went to hell before it burnt, dinnit? Before Angelus made his magnificent Poof entrance with the Judge's hand on his heart. All demon, that one.

_Nonono_, it was before I got an organ dropped on my spine. Started to go wrong a few minutes after I dispatched The Annoying One with a well-placed cage and a few hefty yanks of a chain into sunlight. Dru wasn't up for even a quick shag, so it was TV all around that morning. The signs were there. Should have paid attention. The antenna broke on the Annoying One's set. Tele only picked up PAX for a week. PAX and its bleedin' 7-days a week, 24-hour "Touched by an Angel" marathon.

And the _fish_. Let's not forget the bleedin' fish. Day after I go Aurelian on the vamps, make myself a right Master of Sunnydale with the minions and _nomorebloodychanting_, this white-collar vampire bloke comes up to me with a clipboard. "Delivery for the Annointed One. Sign here." I bloody well don't sign, and I take the whelp up by his neck.

"What's this about," I growl.

And he motions at this forklift comin' up behind him, ten crates of goddamn Halibut dumped right on the warehouse floor. I crush the bugger's windpipe, not because he needs to breathe, but because the pain's a right comfort to me. The bloke tells me that it's a standing order and that I can be expecting more every Tuesday until the old contract's up. Crates and crates of stinking, thawing fish. Didn't even bother to ask the minions what that was about. Didn't want to know. Didn't care. Dru went off on her "burning baby fishies swimmin' all around your head," which struck me right proper. 'Swhat she said to me in the alley the night she turned me, when I thought my dark goddess was something as mundane as a London pickpocket. _Shouldaseenthesigns_. End and beginning. Symmetry. Shoulda known this town was gonna be the death of me.

_WhichiswhyI'mbackhere_. SunnyHell. Cor, I shoulda packed up Dru that minute she went on about the fishes, shipped off to Cleveland. But I didn't. So. What's left, eh? I mean that quite literally, diary. Almost outta JD. Knicked a whole palatte outside the city limits. 'salmost all empty. 'Salmost nothing. What's left without my Dru, eh? Nothingnothingnothing.

Except the Bloody Slayer.

Always except the Bloody Slayer.

Bloody Women.


	3. 1997, Master Vamp

**29 September 1997**

Tonight was bloody FANTASTIC. First time that I cut loose since the angry mob surrounded Dru and me in Prague. All this time sticking to alleys and dark places, hiding out in abandoned flats and scuttling through the fine promenades like frightened--people--almost had me forgetting what a decent scrap feels like.

Diary, you know me. The Annoying One's Saint Vigeous source-of-the-vamps-power religious bullshit bored me to tears. All that chanting drove me out of my skull. Hell, if I hadn't managed to convince the Runt, smug on his little dais, to send the troops with me, _I_ would've ripped him apart then and there. But he agreed, uneasily, and at length.

We stormed the school all manly-like. The humans scattered like frightened cattle before us. It was _glorious_. The kills cornered, the Slayer with no choice but to fight--it was like the Old Days. Except this Scourge of Europe didn't get the kills or the Slayer, but that's almost beside the point.

And yeh, I buggered off when the Slayer's mum put in a guest appearance with an axe. But this isn't a setback, not hardly. Slayers aren't complicated creatures. A band of merry Slayerettes is a bit worrisome--them tying her to the world, giving her a reason to live and all--but with the Runt out of the way, I'm Master Vamp of Sunnydale, and it's a certainty that if I throw enough bodies at the problem, the Slayer's Merry Gang is bound to snuff it sooner or later.

Diary, did you ever figure me for the orders-and-minions type? Seems almost like the universe is playing a very cruel joke, except this time I'm not the punchline. A fellow could get used to this kind of power. Dru says that a respectable bloke should write a To-Do list. Chart goals, track progress, that sort of thing. Wonder if she hasn't been watching too many daytime talk shows. She's on me all-hourly to _outline my goals, delegate responsibilities_. Since hitting Sunnydale, Dru's been speaking a new kind of nonsense. But she's _insistent_ and more than that, she's _right_.

Might as well give it a go.

**The Master Vamp of Sunnydale Official To Do Top-Priority List (in Full) **

1. Nick new red polyester shirts / pomade / two dozen hair nets.

2. Kill Slayer.

3. Hire (more) minions after having ranks depleted by Slayer/self

4. Declare school off-limits for future vamp attacks (linoleum makes my skin itch)

5. Steal new TV set (color -- ANTENNA THAT PICKS UP SOMETHING OTHER THAN PAX) for bedroom (TOP PRIORITY)

6. Browbeat minion into cleaning up the Annoying One's ashes, they're giving Dru bad juju or somesuch

7. Turn interior decorator--NOT one of those modern design types

8. Cancel all scheduled chants for the rest of the year

9. Kill someone for those bloody fish deliveries (HIGH PRIORITY)

10. Impress new minions with drinking skills

11. Feed Dru, feed self

12. Bar Brawl (?) Beer (? --depends if decent drafts are on-tap at the local pub)

13. Force minions to complete to-do list

14. Stalk Slayer (IF NOT DEAD, see list item #2).

15. Kill Slayerettes (?--depends on mood. LOW PRIORITY)

16. find Dru a more hearty pet--stuffed badger / cactus

17. Find novel ways to destroy world (? -- mostly for appearances)

18. Find books: _"The 20th Century Vampire: Coping with Technology,"_ _"Striking it Rich in the Military-Industrial Complex"_ or _"What, No Hard Currency? How Credit Cards are The Vampire's New Best Friend"_ for Dru

Bugger this. Dru is calling for me. Something about the TV set. Guess a bloke can't catch a midnight nap after a hard night's work.


	4. 1998, New Years

**24 December 1998**

It's been near a month since that ill-conceived, but (bugger-all) enlightening trip back to SunnyD.

"Home sweet home."

Can you believe that mewling drivel I wrote, diary? Me bloody neither. So. Never happened, as far as I'm concerned. Except that righteously fun brawl in the Magic Shop. Even the Slayer and Angel making googly eyes at each other couldn't dilute the fun of scrappin' with those no-account goons-for-hire. Wouldn't want to forget a fun spot of violence like that, even if I can't admit to Dru what a rush it was. Backs to the wall, fists and fangs flying. She'd take it personally. _It's not polite to kill your own kind, that's for naughty vampires who have no cakes_.

It's Christmas Eve in Rio. Dru and I figured on picking off tourists, arms laden with packages, stumbling through the streets, in celebration for our Lord and Savior's birthday. But best-laid plans and all that. We came all this way south only to find that the sodding Christ the Redeemer statue makes our skin itch in lighted promenades, the sodden closed-in alleyways, even in the darkest corner of the lowest sewer (and who bloody well comes to Rio just to dig out another methane trap). If I wanted to feel the Eyes of Judgment boring into the back of my skull, I would have stayed in sodding SunnyHell. No thank you. 'S shame really. Knew I should have pushed for Sampa. _Non ducor, duco_.

We're about five miles from the Cidade Maravilhosa, in a posh two-winged estate. How we supped last night! We took the fat lord and lady of the manor on the velvet sheets. It was maravilhosa. Knowing that the Poof's pining over lost love in the Slayer's little psycho-drama is silver lining on the cake. Let's just wipe the slate clean for the new year, eh? Forget all that Chaos/Lister demon nonsense I was blathering on about.

Today is near-on perfect.

I feel like a little poetry.

**Reflections on a Christmas Season, in the Scale of "The Night Before Christmas"**

'S Christmas Eve and all through the flat,

not a creature was stirring, not even a rat.

The beer bottles were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that more Jack would soon be there;

The vampires were nestled snug in their crypts,

While visions of ruddy children danced in their heads;

and Dru in her lily dress and I in my cap,

Had just settled our bodies for a short daytime nap,

When out on the landing there arose such a rukus

I sprang from the bed with a curt "bugger this!"

Away to the sunlight I stumbled like bum

Tore open the door and to wrangle the chum.

What to my blathering eyes should appear

But a miniature Slayer with infinite cheer!

In her hand were eight tiny stakes,

All in a row, none of them fakes!

Rapidly, the Slayerettes eagerly came

She whistled and shouted and called out by name:

"Now Xander! now Giles! Now Willow and Dawn,

On Riley! On Angel! on Cordy and Gunn!"

As dead dust before the Slayer's stake would fly,

I stood dumb, without even a sigh.

"Just my luck!" They thought I would exclaim,

But silent I stayed as they looked on with disdain.

The end of my life, this certainly would be,

If not for Spavro demon lumbering toward me.

Like a flash! Like a bolt! They sprung into the air,

Hacking and slashing without even a care!

Off they ran, demon and sod all

Leaving me holding the proverbial bottle.

Oh hurrah, oh hurray, oh damn bloody wonderful.

Cor blimey, kill me now, this is just-bloody-wonderful.


End file.
